some while they were kept waiting in reserve, taking what shelter
they could from the Mauser bullets, which came whirring through
the tall jungle grass. This is the most trying part of a fight. It
is all right when at last you can charge your enemy and come to
close quarters with him, but to lie on the ground under fire,
unable to see anybody to fire upon, is the worst strain upon the
soldiers' nerves. As one after another is shot, the officers begin
to watch the men closely to see how they are standing it.
Roosevelt received a trifling wound from a shrapnel bullet at the
beginning of the fight. Later his orderly had a sun-stroke, and
when he called another orderly to take a message, this second man
was killed as he stood near, pitching forward dead at Roosevelt's
feet.

Finally came the order to charge. Roosevelt was the only mounted
man in the regiment. He had intended to go into the fight on foot,
as he had at Las Guasimas, but found that the heat was so bad that
he could not run up and down the line and superintend things
unless he was on horseback. When he was mounted he could see his
own men better, and they could see him. So could the enemy see him
better, and he had one or two narrow escapes because of being so
conspicuous.

He started in the rear of the regiment, which is where the Colonel
should be, according to the books, but soon rode through the lines
and led the charge up "Kettle Hill,"--so-called by the Rough
Riders because there were some sugar kettles on top of it. His
horse was scraped by a couple of bullets, as he went up, and one
of the bullets nicked his elbow. Members of the other cavalry
regiments were mingled with the Rough Riders in the charge,--their